The cultivation of melon and strawberry, which are well known as protected horticulture products, is generally carried out by direct seeding or planting of seedlings into a cultivation bed (rooting zone medium) as in the cultivation device or cultivation method described in Japanese Kokai (Laid-open) Publication H07-327514 or Japanese Kokai (Laid-open) Publication H05-227848, and it is known that oxygen is fed to the roots of the plant under cultivation by cultivation soil tillage and/or the period of solar ray irradiation is prolonged as far as possible to thereby promote the growth of stems, leaves and fruits and the maturation of fruits.
In practicing such a cultivation method, the working posture required in cultivating the cultivation soil, which compels a long time of bending forward and maintaining an inefficient position, is nothing but heavy labor. Thus, there is the possibility that lumbago and other health problems due to the bending forward posture during the long time maintenance of working may arise among cultivation workers.
The technique of nutriculture which comprises circulating a culture solution to feed nutrients to the rooting zone of each plant is in use as a method for solving such problems as mentioned above. This cultivation method does not use cultivation soil but causes a culture solution to artificially circulate via artificially made grooves and the roots of plants are planted therein. Nutriculture is thus a cultivation method using no medium in the cultivation bed and, therefore, the orientation of the plant under cultivation can be varied with ease according to the direction of the sunshine, and the systematized equipment for supplementing nutrients and oxygen to the culture solution makes it unnecessary to perform tillage or weeding, and workers are released from the painful bending forward posture. However, there is a problem, namely the possibility of plants being infected by pathogens that have entered into the culture solution circulating to feed water and nutrients to the rooting zone of each plant.
According to the present invention, a culture solution feeding pipe is connected to each porous ecopot for cultivation which is hung in a space below a shelf pole in the house, and the culture solution is thus fed to each ecopot. Thus, measures are taken to prevent infection by pathogens and isolate the ecopots from the source of infection by placing a collecting bucket below each ecopot while feeding water and nutrients and oxygen to the rooting zone of each plant through the culture solution fed to each ecopot via the piping. By employing such a variable and efficient space utilization type cultivation method, the present invention provides a novel cultivation method according to which the orientation of stems, leaves and fruits can be varied freely toward the sunshine to enrich fruits of the plant under cultivation and increase sugar accumulation therein and, at the same time, the standing and facing working posture can be realized and which has the possibility of supplying a large number of high-quality melon or strawberry to the market.
The cultivation bed of the present invention can be expected to be effective, also as a measure for alleviating the above-mentioned problems in nutriculture, in preventing infection by pathogens and isolating plants from the source of infection. An example of melon cultivation is shown in FIG. 1. The method of the present invention is a cultivation method characterized in that the medium is placed in each porous ecopot for cultivation for a long period from good seedling production to field cultivation and harvest and that the cultivation ecopots and seedling pots and other cultivation materials after use are reused as a regenerated medium.